I blame teh skoolz

On the Radio 1 news today there was a snippet (I am not going to look it up but it will be on the BBC website) about some truly stupid youngsters. Apparently, Police in Scotland have become the first in the UK to target people who admit to crimes on social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook. (*)

Now, for me, I think this is a good idea. If people (mostly “yoofs” according to the news) are stupid enough to commit a crime and then boast about it online they need to be taken out of the gene pool urgently. One of the young lads interviewed had apparently put up pictures of himself in a balaclava carrying a knife. Why he went to these lengths to remain anonymous, then outed himself online is beyond me.

The most frustrating part, and a good example of how taking away the “classical” education has failed children was a young retard complaining about the police scouring social networking sites to find offenders. He actually had the gall to say it was an invasion of his privacy for the police to look over his Bebo page to find out what crimes he has committed. Flabbergasting.

For me, it weakens the real destruction of our privacy when people think things like this are an invasion of privacy. It is like putting a full page advert in a newspaper and then complaining that people reading it are invading your privacy. Idiocy reigns.

* Oddly I cant find this on the real BBC news so I may have dreamed it – but I hope not as I was driving at the time…

Missing the Point?

I was browsing through the Times blogs yesterday and I came across one by John Humphrys (which was actually an extract from “In God We Doubt” about to be published by Hodder & Stoughton) carrying the title “In God we doubt” with the following tagline:

He went looking for God and ended up an angry agnostic – unable to believe but enraged by the arrogance of militant atheists. It’s hard to see the purpose of the world, he says, but don’t blame its evils on religion

As you can see, there was no way I wasn’t going to read this!

Overall, this is a reasonably well written piece. While it isn’t good enough to make me interested in buying the book it may well appeal to some people with wavering faith and the writing style is certainly inoffensive on the whole. John Humphrys is basically explaining how he went from being brought up a good Christian to his faith wavering and finally he “deconverted” to agnosticism. I wont go into the nonsensical idea that “agnosticism” is anything other than a complete wet lettuce of a philosophical idea, which has at its root the basic assumption that God does exist but is insufficiently proven for worship, that is for another day.

There is one, possibly major, problem with the whole piece and (I suspect) the line of reasoning from which it flows. After a lengthy and introspective introduction, Mr Humphrys identifies what he sees as “the attitude of those militant atheists who seem to hold believers in contempt.” (It is interesting that he makes a list of seven points, but again this diversion can wait). His reflection on “militant atheists” produces the following list of characteristics, faults and problems: (These are opinions which “militant atheists” are supposed to hold to)

1. Believers are mostly naive or stupid. Or, at least, they’re not as clever as atheists.

2. The few clever ones are pathetic because they need a crutch to get them through life.

3. They are also pathetic because they can’t accept the finality of death.

4. They have been brainwashed into believing. There is no such thing as a “Christian child”, for instance – just a child whose parents have had her baptised.

5. They have been bullied into believing.

6. If we don’t wipe out religious belief by next Thursday week, civilisation as we know it is doomed.

7. Trust me: I’m an atheist. I make no apology if I have oversimplified their views with that little list: it’s what they do to believers all the time.

After sharing his earth shattering wisdom the reader is further encouraged to discover each point in detail. It is here that I largely gave up on any hope for him. The explanations and rebuttals follow, now with my rebuttal of his rebuttal…

1. This is so clearly untrue it’s barely worth bothering with. Richard Dawkins, in his bestselling The God Delusion, was reduced to producing a “study” by Mensa that purported to show an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief. He also claimed that only a very few members of the Royal Society believe in a personal god. So what? Some believers are undoubtedly stupid (witness the creationists) but I’ve met one or two atheists I wouldn’t trust to change a lightbulb.

In his first sentence he gets it spot on, but possibly not in the way he thinks and despite his scorn for this it is his first point and he goes to great lengths to try and dismiss it. The reality of the matter is no “militant atheist” I know really thinks all theists are dumb and I would be interested in seeing the published information to support this idea. There are very intelligent and well educated theists – this goes without saying – and equally there are retarded atheists. Here, Humphrys has created a strawman and then attacked it. He tried to demolish it with an appeal to ridicule but, come the crunch, he failed. Nothing in what he writes actually says anything relevant to the point he tries to address so I suspect this is actually proof some atheists are dumb.

The strawman used by Humphrys reads that atheists think theists are “mostly” dumb or not as clever as atheists. Nothing that he writes contradicts this idea, except the appeal to ridicule at the beginning – and if it really is so clearly untrue, why address it first and foremost? If he strongly thinks it is false, then why is he using phrases like “reduced to using a ‘study'” (with sneer quotes)? Strawmen are wonderful things, but they need to be used properly…

2. Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible. It doesn’t prove anything about either.

Here he continues the strawman and again says nothing. I am not sure what point he is trying to make here. Does he mean to imply that religious belief is “good” because some people need alcohol to get through the day? Is he saying that the Bible (or what ever religious belief) is nothing but a crutch for people with problems and then claiming it doesn’t prove the original (yet strawman) argument he presented? If so, he is sadly mistaken.

After what he must feel was a rapier-like strike with the first point, Mr Humphrys descends into meaningless, pointless sentences like point 2. I am sure, somewhere, it means something but reading it on the Times Blog is baffling. He has no means of dismissing the claimed idea, for example with point 2 he does not even attempt to explain why intelligent theists are not simply clinging to their belief like an alcoholic clings to their bottle, he just says (an intellectually lazy) “so what.” For example:

3. Maybe, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Count the number of atheists in the foxholes or the cancer wards.

Again, he has no point other than a strawman. He has no way of dismissing or even disagreeing with it and finally he trots out the old stalwart of the theist case – Atheists in Foxholes. Now, anyone who has read “God Is Not Great” will know that Christopher Hitchens is indeed someone who has been an atheist under fire, as have I and many, many other people I know. In all honesty, I know more people who have been an atheist in a foxhole than a theist.

But even if we assume the claim is correct, it leaves open the argument that the gods the theists are worshipping are somewhat neglectful. Surely they should be caring for their believers more than unbelievers, so why is it so many of the faithful are made to suffer…?

4. True, and many children reject it when they get older. But many others stay with it.

This leaves me with a massive “eh?” So what? He agrees with the militant atheist claim, so what is his point?

5. This is also true in many cases but you can’t actually bully someone into believing – just into pretending to believe.

Mr Humphrys is misrepresenting the “militant atheists” claim here so that he can simply add a rebuttal in the form of a twist. Obviously he is thinks it is ok for religions to bully people into observing their practices because, deep down, the person doesn’t believe in them. Madness.

6. Of course the mad mullahs are dangerous and extreme Islamism is a threat to be taken seriously. But we’ve survived monotheist religion for 4,000 years or so, and I can think of one or two other things that are a greater threat to civilisation.

It seems his liberalised anglican upbringing is showing here. Fundamentalist Islam is, indeed, dangerous in the short term violence aspect but the reality is no amount of terrorist attacks can destroy civilised democracy. Yes, people may die but then people die every day. The destruction of civil liberties that is following the fear of Islam provides a more long-term worry. The destruction of education being forced upon the west by Fundamentalist Christianity is more likely to do long-term harm to our societies ability to exist than people with semtex strapped to their chests. (Even “liberal” Holland is suffering – for example). The “harm” caused by religion is not always exemplified by planes flying into towers – think of the oppression of homosexuals, the subjugation of women, caste systems, refusal of medical treatment for minors etc.

Also, I am not sure his history is up to speed either. While Judaism may have been around for 4000 years, it is certainly a lot shorter period of time in which monotheistic death cults have been dominant on a global scale – let alone people who get their orders from the voice in their head god having access to nuclear weapons.

7. Why? For those of us who are neither believers nor atheists it can be very difficult. Doubters are left in the deeply unsatisfactory position of finding the existence of God unprovable and implausible, and the comfort of faith unachievable. But at the same time we find the reality of belief undeniable.

Again, we have the illusion of a middle ground which is more reasoned, more acceptable, than the non-belief of Atheism. This middle ground has been largely created by theists who seek to undermine the idea that atheism can exist. It is not logical to have no opinion on the subject unless you have given it no thought. I am confused by the concept of finding the existence of god implausible but the reality of belief undeniable. Working through what passes for logic is giving me a head ache but I will try:

Mr Humphrys is asserting he is an agnostic because he finds the existence of god implausible but the reality that people “believe” in god is undeniable so he can’t think of himself as an atheist.

Did I get it right?

It has that wonderful ring of being “true” but it isn’t. Just because lots of other people “believe” something with all their hearts does not mean it is true. For centuries people believed that the Earth was the centre of the solar system, that the solar system was the universe, that stars were ancient warriors, that the gods sat on top of Mount Olympus and interfered with mankind and so on. Not one of these things were true and all the belief in the world will not overturn that.

It strikes me that, although Mr Humphrys describes himself as an “agnostic” and ridicules the idea that children are indoctrinated into religious beliefs, he is suffering from this indoctrination. He (I assume) will certainly agree that lightning is not the result of Zeus’ anger, that Neptune does not control the oceans and Loki is not spreading global mischief. He (again, I assume) will agree that there is a continent across the ocean from Europe, that the Chinese are not devils, that elves do not live in woods, dwarves do not mine gold in the Norse mountains, faeries do not steal Irish children and the tooth fairy is not responsible for the coin under the pillow.

All of these things have at some point been believed to be true by people over the world. All of them. They all have as much evidence for existing as the Christian God. If the existence of belief is proof of existence, then they exist. The existence of the things I mentioned is implausible and unlikely, but this seems not to matter to Mr Humphrys.

I find myself wondering if he really does doubt the existence of god.

On a final note, and getting back to the subject of this diatribe, Mr Humphrys closes with:

As for the fanatics – religious or secular – history suggests they succeed only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be defeated by our own irrational fear. For every fanatic there are countless ordinary, decent people who believe in their own version of a benevolent God and wish no harm to anyone. Many of them regard it as their duty to try to make the world a better place. It is too easy to blame the evils of the world on belief in God. In the end, if we make a mess of things, we shall have ourselves to blame – not religion and not God. After all, he doesn’t exist. Does he?

While I actually agree with the first part of this (and this is why I feel the “fear of Islam” is more worrying than the effects of actual terrorism), he finishes it up by missing the point completely. I know of no atheists who blame god for the world’s troubles. The blame has, at times, been placed on religion which, despite the assertion he closes with, is something he seems to be agreeing with. The people are making a mess of things. They are making a mess of it under the idea that they are working to a higher power and worldly suffering will be followed by a reward in the afterlife. This is the result of religion not secularism.

(I will leave looking at Giles Fraser to others for now but if you have spare time read the comments, they are priceless – even Fr Brian Storey pops up!)

[tags]John Humphrys, Humphrys, Religion, Belief, Christianity, Faith, Delusion, God, Bible, Logic, Fallacy, Strawman, Appeal To Ridicule, Philosophy, Society, Culture, Understanding, Times Online, Logical Fallacy, Confusion, Islam, Monotheism, History, Agnostic, Atheist, Militant Atheist, In God We Doubt, Book[/tags]

Victims not Experts

Refusing to register with the BBC to leave a comment, I will vent my frustrations here (although I doubt the BBC care about a backlink from this blog!).

It is common in the real world, and the mainstream media’s representation of it, to succumb to the false authority fallacy. The BBC has another “news” item which does this in a dramatic manner. Seriously, today has convinced me that 24 hour news will be the end of the world.

In a piece titled “Longer detention ‘may save lives’” the BBC begin with:

As the debate rages over the length of time terror suspects can be detained without charge, three people whose lives were changed forever in 2005 by the 7 July London bombings explain why they are backing an extension.

Now, what is “newsworthy” about this completely eludes me, but even the most cursory reading shows the problem with attributing authority falsely. The three people the BBC have dragged out are victims of a terrible terrorist attack, they are not experts on the law or social policy. They have no greater insight to the event, or its repercussions than anyone else. The BBC may as well have dragged three random people off the street and asked them for all the weight the opinions should carry.

And here lies the problem. The opinions of the victims carries more weight because we, as a society, are now used to the false authority. We listen to ageing pop stars when they talk about global economics, we listen to Christian clergy when they talk about housing and so on. We have been force fed the false authority to such a degree it is almost assumed. Modern victims seem to feel they have a right to tell people how to sort problems out based solely on the experience which made them a victim. It is madness. It is scary madness because this drives public policy. Very scary madness.

As I have made this into a post rather than a comment, I feel I should highlight some of the bits I have big issues with. As an example, when talking about the proposals to increase the time an innocent person (well, I suppose they are guilty of looking Islamic in a western nation) can be detained without charge to 56 days, they have this to say:

“If it’s going to help prevent another 7/7, then I have to support it.” [ROB WEBB – BROTHER OF VICTIM, LAURA]

“We believed 90 days was right so I would certainly be in favour of 56 days,” [JUNE TAYLOR – MOTHER OF VICTIM, CARRIE]

He wants the law changed to allow terror suspects to be held for as long as is necessary, so long as detention is dealt with responsibly and is under judicial review. [MICHAEL HENNING – BOMB SURVIVOR]

Great comments, really. They show why laws should not be written by people who are traumatised by loss.

Rob Webb hits the nail on the head, “if” is the critical part of it though. The changes to the law would not have prevented the 7 July bombings. They would not have prevented the recent London and Glasgow attempts.

Worryingly, they are quite likely to further alienate the segment of the population in which the terrorists move and recruit. This will, in the words of the Treason laws, have the effect of providing support and succour to the enemy. Is that really what these people want?

All three say largely the same things about how detaining people for up to 90 days is OK as it may save lives – with references to the tabloid favourite about the courts putting the suspects human rights before those of innocent people. This is complete tosh. It really is nonsense. The rights of the suspect are the exact same as the rights of the innocent person. If you take away the rights of the suspect (remembering they are innocent at this time, over three quarters of terrorism suspects have been released without charge…), you are taking them away from everyone. White or black. Christian or Muslim (or atheist).

Rob Webb also states (and this is another tabloid ranting point):

“In the balance of fairness, I would rather be completely unfair to them, than for a completely innocent person to be murdered on the public transport network.”

(In this context I think “them” means terrorist suspects rather than Asians in general)

This really does show why victims are not experts. I wonder what peoples reactions would be if the people who were most in danger from this new legislation were not a minority group? Would Mr Webb be happy to do 56 days in detention (Interment by another name) and then released without charge? That is effectively what this legislation calls for — just because at the moment “we” don’t feel that it will target us does not make that the case.

[tags]Comment Week, BBC, False Authority, Law, Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Fallacy, Society, Culture, Logic, Reason, Sane, Traumatic, Loss, Revenge, Minorities, Islam, Christianity, UK[/tags]

Everything about diets seems to be bull

Damp down your instinctive feeling that statistics are really boring for a few moments and bear with me. On the UK Office of National Statistics web pages there is some fascinating evidence that the diet we are constantly told is good for us is probably making us fat. (Fatness being the current manifestation of everything bad that there could possibly be about a human being of course.)

Basically the ONS summary of its data says that British people are getting fatter at a rate of knots. At the same time they are eating less fat and sugar and less calories 🙂 I just have to quote some of it.

“The prevalence of obesity in England has increased markedly among both adults and children since the mid 1990s. In 2002 it was similar for both sexes; the rate for boys and girls was 17 per cent and for adults was 23 per cent. In 1995 the equivalent figures were 10 per cent for boys and 12 per cent for girls, 15 per cent for men and 18 per cent for women.

There is no evidence that the average calorific intake or consumption of foods rich in fat and added sugar has increased in the UK since the mid 1980s. Men aged 19 to 64 in 2000/01 reported a daily energy intake of approximately 2,323 kcal (a reduction of 6 per cent since 1986/87). Women in the same age groups reported 1,642 kcal, a reduction of 3 per cent.

Reductions over the same period were also observed in the contribution of total fat to total energy intake (from 38 to 34 per cent in men and from 39 to 34 per cent in women) and saturated fat (from 15 to 13 per cent in men and from 17 to 13 per cent in women).”

After the “obligatory five pieces of fruit a day injunction – an old moan on this blog – (for which it produces no evidence but shows how many people at different ages eat it) the food page says that people are eating less saturated fat and replacing red meat with chicken.

Now, this stuff bears a good few explanations:

First, it seems a fair guess that many of these people were lying. I think people are more likely to lie about what they eat now than they were fifteen years ago, as we have all got more and more neurotic about our food. So, I wouldn’t becessarily take this at face value.

However, if it’s even partly accurate, the majority (the MAJORITY) of people are clinically obese or overweight*. I don’t know what it’s like where you live but I can’t see that around me.

But, taking the definition of clinically obese as having come to mean a bit plump and above – doesn’t this suggest that eating less fat and eating fewer calories are utterly doomed strategies for staying slim? Eating chicken with the skin and fat trimmed off appears to be more likely to be associated with fatness than eating old-fashioned meat. And so on.

Let me repeat – eating less fat doesn’t seem to make you thin. Now I know fair amount of the blame here goes with the use of hydrogenated fats that are stuffed into all those “healthy low fat” spreads that people still choose over butter, in the belief that they are better for them.

Eating fewer calories doesn’t seem to make you thin.

The website mentions that people eat many more prepared ready-meals and get less exercise. Well, hmm, now that seems more like it.

** Men were more likely than women to be overweight (or obese), 67 per cent compared with 58 per cent. This compares with 58 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women ten years earlier.

(The references are this page and this one)

More on McKeith

It seems I am not alone in getting some satisfaction out of seeing McKeith have to admit she is not a doctor.
Back off, man; I’m a scientist.” also picks up the topic with its “Bless” post.

The post picks up on McKeith saying how she feels “bullied” and she claims ” I’m entitled to use ‘Dr’ because I have a PhD in Holistic Nutrition, which I studied for four years to get.” Now that is funny. Obviously she is joking…

Anyway, the Back off, man; I’m a scientist makes the reasonable comments:

This is a woman who goes on TV and makes “an obese woman cry, in her own back garden, by showing her a tombstone with her own name on it, made out of chocolate”, who said to another “‘Do you want to see your daughter get married and have babies? Because the way things are going you’ll have a heart attack at 40″.

She’s made a career out of making fat people cry, so just let the satisfaction flow.

Well Said that man!

Guns and kicking

Fights with kicks rather than punches are very much more likely to lead to serious injury or death, according to a pathologist I heard on TV the other day but can’t find a reference for. (Thank you, Google….) Anyway, with or without scholarly support, simple logic suggests that most of us can kick much harder than we can punch, because a kick engages the whole bodyweight. If you kick someone or stamp on them, there is a good chance you will kill them.

So, even in unarmed combat, the feet are deadlier weapons than the hands. The likelihood of death depends on the power of the weapon. To take up on points in the guns-and-crime blog, fights in which feet are used will be deadlier than those in which punches are traded. Where the protaganists have knives or guns, there is always more chance of death or serious injury.

So, the often-expressed argument that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” falls down here. For a given level of aggression, the chance of death rises the easier the access to deadly weapons.

This isn’t the whole issue, of course. Every Swiss citizen is required to hold a gun. I doubt if the Swiss murder rate is even equal to the UK’s, let alone the USA’s. (Except, obviously, the murder rate in the English village, Midsomer Norton, which must put Baltimore in the shade) Baltimore has the highest murder rate in the USA (genuine thanks to Wikipedia ) but lower rates of non-fatal violent crime than the next highest contender in the murder sweepstakes, which is Detroit.

With no local knowledge of US cities- beyond what’s provided by the supreme TV show The Wire, of course – this is just speculation. Maybe guns are just easier to get hold of in Baltimore than Detroit? So any crime is more likely to end in a death?

There has got to be more to it, of course, given the Swiss example of a country with lots of guns and few murders. Social and cultural factors can provide an explanation. The social divisions in American cities are huge,. They are made more painful for those at the bottom of the racie and class heap by a context of values that regard those without money as worthless.

It’s common for ministers (BBC ) to blame hiphop music for the spread of gun crime in England. The glorification of guns and money in gangsta rap lyrics is indeed often ugly. However, it reflects values common in American society. These may be attractive to young men around the world who feel unmanned by the options open to them. However, it isn’t likely to influence fulfilled and optimistic young men, beyond a fantasy level. This is like blaming heavy metal bands for teenage suicides.

And in any case, it comes back to the avilability of guns. There are always dangerous and violent people. If you have the misfortune to come up against them, you had better hope they don’t have guns. (And that they don’t know about the feet thing either.)